December 23, 2008

Remarkable Rudeness

We were given little time and no money to do so. Our assignment was to develop full-blown plans -- including creative and media -- for three different markets.

We spent tens of thousands of dollars on the pitch. We had people working nights and weekends -- including Thanksgiving weekend.

When we gave the presentation the head marketing person from the client organization sat with her laptop open reading and answering emails for half the presentation.

While many clients are wonderful and appreciative, sometimes the rudeness and disrespect agencies have to put up with is intolerable.

One of the most difficult tightropes an agency principle has to walk is this: The desire to react honestly to insufferable, self-important jerks, and the knowledge that doing so may cost jobs to people in the agency.

Just once I'd like to be able to tell someone like her to put her laptop on vibrate and stick it where the sun don't shine.

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."